Long time, no post. So what else is new. Anyway, things have been OK here. I have new photos to post to the blog , we did some traveling to the coast last weekend , the job search is progressing enough to warrant our first expedition to Barça next week, and it was my birthday yesterday ! Not bad, except…

…Except I can’t shake the feeling I just got punched in the gut. So I guess this means it’s time to see what this blog can do and get a bit more political. Juan Cole posted an article by Mark Levine today (Nov 5) at http://www.juancole.com/ that pretty much sums up my mood with passages like :

« In the last week--with more than enough time to influence the election--doctors from America’s leading research hospitals published a study demonstrating that US forces have killed upwards of 100,000 Iraqis, the majority of them women and children killed by American bombs. Yet before November 2 Americans could at least say they weren’t directly responsible for the disaster that has unfolded there in Iraq, since an unelected President had taken the country to war under false pretenses. No more. As of today, American society has declared its support for the invasion, and as such is morally and politically culpable for every single one of those 100,000 dead, and every single one of the tens of thousands of deaths that are sure to follow. »
and

« The Bush Administration is free to proceed with a violently imperialist foreign policy with little fear of repercussion or political cost at home--who cares about abroad?--the Left is stupefied at its own political and moral incompetence, and the people at large are increasingly split between a fundamentalist religious-nationalist camp, and a yuppie-liberal camp that has no real legs to stand on and has little hope of engaging the millions of poor and working class who have moved to the right because of “social issues.” »

What was most alarming to me in the weeks before 11-2, and is downright frightening now, is that polls showed a majority of Bush supporters still believed the hype about: (a) the 9-11 link; (b) that the WMD’s had been found; and (c) that the war was going well.

I guess that’s how you get to achieve world domination and still call yourself a democracy. It really is an outstanding feat. I have a feeling that if we make it through this period, it will be studied for generations to come.

Other interesting reads might be Arundhati Roy’s recent piece published by commondreams.org at: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1103-20.htm

Her main talking points involve our conceptions of justice, peace, and human rights. A sample includes:

« The assault on vulnerable, fragile sections of society is so complete, so cruel and so clever that its sheer audacity has eroded our definition of justice. It has forced us to lower our sights, and curtail our expectations. Even among the well-intentioned, the magnificent concept of justice is gradually being substituted with the reduced, far more fragile discourse of "human rights".
This is an alarming shift. The difference is that notions of equality, of parity, have been pried loose and eased out of the equation. It's a process of attrition. Almost unconsciously, we begin to think of justice for the rich and human rights for the poor. Justice for the corporate world, human rights for its victims. Justice for Americans, human rights for Afghans and Iraqis. Justice for the Indian upper castes, human rights for Dalits and Adivasis (if that.) Justice for white Australians, human rights for Aborigines and immigrants (most times, not even that.) »

And on the invasion of Iraq:

« That invasion will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it and are now in the process of selling it. »

Also, you may want to check out http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/for some insight of what the occupation looks, sounds, and smells like from the inside. It is very well-written and was one of the two blogs that turned me on to blogging. You can also check the archives for posts during the invasion itself.

So you may ask how all this looks from over here. Actually I have somewhat mixed emotions. While the decision to leave the US was not purely a political one, the political and social climate made it very easy and proved to be a strong push factor. So in a way, I’m very relieved to not have to be there and listen to asinine comments and feel constrained to express my opinion. I know that there are some places in the US (read: blue states) where one can have rational discussions about current affairs, but I can assure you Dallas was not one of them.

On the other hand, I think something very important is happening in the country (at least it needs to be) and I feel I could be missing out. There’s plenty of work to be done and I’m not sure if or how I’ll be involved, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

In the meantime, Europe has some big decisions to make. I am personally of the opinion that it needs to get off it’s ass and start doing its own thing without first asking what will the Americans think. I know the press in the US would have you believe that the Europeans are strongly Anti-American. The reality is far more complicated but I can tell you that they are scared shitless of the US, its unrestrained power, and what someone like Bush might do with it. For a couple of weeks before 11-2, the French TV kept airing documentary after documentary that tried to figure out what made Americans tick and what it was about Bush that was so damn appealing to so many people. I think instead of fretting over the US they need to be getting their shit together and strengthen the EU politically, economically, and certainly militarily. How the US addresses the China issue and how successful it is in signing up as many trade deals as it can will have a big impact on how much room the EU will have to maneuver. CC sent a nice piece (http://www.rense.com/general34/realre.htm) about how the strong Euro might already be affecting US political/military moves as relates to the price of oil. I checked the references myself just to be sure and everything checked out legit. The thesis is not surprising, but certainly frightening.

All in all its a pretty sad state of affairs. While I have no desire to see a return of Europe running things on a planetary scale (they’ve had their turn and we saw how that ended), I strongly feel we are now seeing a display of how the unchecked power of the global dominator is used. My guess is we’ll have this situation for another 50 years or so unless there is a massive crisis in the world capitalist system in the next few years; this is not an unlikely scenario by the way, but will need to be discussed on another post.

So life in Europe is so far so good. Like I mentioned, there are plenty of internal issues that Europe has to deal with before it can be effective in counterbalancing the US. To me the most exciting thing about the EU experiment is that here we have nations that have waged very ugly, often absurd, and always very bloody wars against each other since their beginnings and have collectively decided to relinquish a good portion of their national sovereignty to create something bigger than any individual state. As you can imagine, the problems are huge. Can there be a state that is not one nation, but many ? How will social needs be balanced with economic pursuits, and who gets to decide? Who benefits from the Union and how ?

The answers to these questions will largely rest on how the Europeans themselves perceive their changing world. My impression is that there are many of the older generation who have fought and will continue fight the political and economic integration every step of the way. As a whole, younger folks are more comfortable with the changes and seem to be at least accepting, if not fully supportive. The worrisome part comes from very vocal reactionary groups driven by xenophobia. Whatever happens here over the next decade or two I believe will have a profound impact on how we think of the nation-state as the basis of political, economic, and social organization. THAT, is just one of the reasons I’m excited to be here right now. We’ll see what happens.

Speaking of seeing, I mentioned some pics (you should be able to check them out here:
http://www.ofoto.com/I.jsp?c=82nxgnrb.7atty25r&x=0&y=upc631). They’re some shots of Angers (english site at: http://www.angers.fr/page/p-143/art_id-/) and the surroundings a few weeks ago, but worth checking out.

Last Monday was a holiday here. Le Toussaint (all saints day) is traditionally the day when folks commemorate deceased family members and ancestors, usually by visiting graves and that sort of thing. We took the opportunity to have a gathering of old friends from College that live in France.

To be precise, the weekend found us in La Rochelle (english site at : http://www.ville-larochelle.fr/english/index.php), a port city of about 70,000 on the Atlantic coast between Brittany and the Gironde, the large estuary of the Garronne downstream of Bordeaux. To get there we descended the heights around the Loire valley dominated by vineyards and outcroppings of slate onto a very wide and very flat coastal plain in the Vendée, a region that reminded us a lot of sout Louisiana. The marshes have long ago been drained by canals and converted to farmland, but a few expanses of wild marshland remain.

Usually when you approach a port city from the land side you start to get distinctive queues that you’re nearing the shore. Things like changing topography, vegetation, etc. Here that was not the case. You get into town all of a sudden and you’re in a different world. La Rochelle came to the fore as a city in the middle ages and was apparently quite prosperous for most of its history. Not surprisingly, the lifeblood came from the ocean. Trade, more so than fishing, made the city prosperous. So much so in fact that the central government grew envious of it prosperity and suspicious of its mercantile ties to England. Eventually, the city was overtaken by Richelieu in the 17th century and most of the city walls were demolished along with a good portion of the city itself. Today, the most impressive remnants of the walls are the two towers that guard the entrance to the old port.

Another impressive thing about this part of France is that the flat land on shore remains that way far out to sea. That provides for some dramatic tides that, in La Rochelle, can have the sea retreat and advance by several kilometers every 6 hours. The amplitude of the tide is also pretty impressive at about 5 meters. It’s pretty cool to sit at a sidewalk cafe at noon and see boats resting on the muddy bottom of the port and return a few hours later to find them floating several meters higher.

We had a great time there and are really looking forward to further exploration of this part of the globe. Our friends there are hard core sailors and showed us pictures of a trip they took to Mallorca this summer. It remains to be seen if Yours Truly can sprout some sea legs by next summer, but stranger things have happened.

Speaking of sailing, this Sunday is the departure (from Les Sables d’Olonne in the same region) of the around the world solo sailing competition known as the Vendée Globe (English site at http://www.vendeeglobe.org/uk/home). It is essentially a dash down toward the south pole and loop around Antarctica (as if it were a buoy) and back. By yourself, traversing the Indian, Pacific, and the dreaded South Atlantic. Who does this? Why? Who knows. For a feel for the south Atlantic I highly recommend watching «The Endurance: Shackleton’s legendary Antarctic Expedition», the documentary about the troubled Antarctic expedition of in 1914-15.

Next week we’re off to Barca for some recon. on our first incursion into what we intend to make our new home on this Old World. An Old World that is in the process of redefining itself, and we’re here to throw our two cents in. News of that trip and how intoxicating the Mediterranean atmosphere really is on the next post.